Welcome! As a coach, I wanted to share information about my basketball interests. The reason for choosing "Massey Basketball" is to make sure people understand this is not an official blog of Galesburg HS. The blog is designed to provide information about the Streaks and basketball, motivation, and anything that interests me.

Friday, October 21, 2011

While I am anxious to get started with practices, it is really great to be in a college town where you get to go watch practices for two weeks before you get started. I have had an opportunity to watch both Knox men and women teams practice this week. I am always impressed with how much energy DIII teams bring to practice.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Last week I had a conversation with a friend who's son was playing flag football. His son is still in grade school. He described that as he was watching the game several mothers of opposing players were jumping up and down, and waving dollar bills in the air. My friend had no idea what was going on. I suggested that maybe they had bet the over/under on the game and were doing well. My friend said,"No, the mothers had promised their sons $1 for every time they pulled out the flags (made the "tackle")."

Earlier this fall I called a friend who I had known since shortly after college. His daughter had participated in a certain sport all through grade school and junior high, and I thought she was pretty good. Whenever ran into the father, he talked about how much his daughter enjoyed that sport. So now that the daughter was high school age, I asked him how she liked the sport in high school. His reply,"Oh, she is not playing that in high school. She loves that sport but the local hs coach of another sport told us that they think our daughter could be DI in the sport she coaches. So we thought it made sense for her to switch sports to try to get a scholarship." I was blown away by this. A kid liked a sport and was good at a sport but chose a new sport because some coach convinced them and their parents they were scholarship material.

Dave Wood, Knox class of 1972 was inducted into the Knox College Hall of Fame. Woody was a Streaks great who was a leader on the Streaks '68 second place in State team. Woody transferred to Knox from Western and went on to become a three year starter at Knox (freshmen were not eligible to play varsity in the NCAA at that time). Woody led the Siwash in scoring every year at Knox and led the Midwest Conference in scoring his senior year by putting in 21.7ppg.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

I have heard the word "toughness" thrown around a lot lately. Reporters on television, radio and in print have opined about a team or player's "toughness" or quoted a coach talking about his team having to be "tougher" to win.

Then, in almost coordinated fashion, I would watch games and see player upon player thumping his chest after a routine play, angrily taunting an opponent after a blocked shot, getting into a shouting match with an opposing player, or squaring up nose-to-nose as if a fight might ensue. I see players jawing at each other, trying to "intimidate" other players. What a waste of time. That is nothing more than fake toughness, and it has no real value.

I often wonder: Do people really understand what coaches and experienced players mean when they emphasize "toughness" in basketball? Or is it just some buzzword that is thrown around haphazardly without clear definition or understanding? I thought it was the latter, and I wrote a short blog item about it a couple of weeks ago.